Posted
by
kdawsonon Monday September 18, 2006 @12:37PM
from the just-resolve-my-names dept.

Joshua Flory writes, "In response to the story about Earthlink and their version of 'Site Finder', I learned today that Earthlink has provided alternate DNS servers that will remain outside of their 'dead DNS' service. However, this is a completely unsupported service, which begs the question, WHY? Everyone can gain access to public DNS servers, or create their own. The point is that people wanted DNS servers supported by EL that do not include this dead DNS service." Sounds like it's time for Earthlink users to check out OpenDNS.com... they make it easy to turn off the bad-URL behavior.

I'm basically happy with it. I get 1.5/256k aDSL for $40, which is pretty pricey but it has flaked out for a total of 1 hour in 4 years. I've learned to avoid calling support, even for billing problems, unless it's worth wasting an hour and getting upset about. That's just never gone well.

Someday I'm going to migrate to a non-ISP-issued email account for good and just hop from cheapest to cheapest.

I miss my netcom shell account, I miss my old email address. It's hard to give that up. There's nothing holding me to earthlink but inertia right now though. I've never used their proprietary software, so my only addiction is to the email address.

What about an ignorant propogation[sic] of ignorance?I imagine that is the much more likely scenario, rather than the unlikely one: someone researches the proper use of the phrase "begging the question," then continues using it improperly, willfully.

The latter would be an informed propagation of ignorance. Well, no, it's no longer ignorance since the phrase makes much more sense in the newer usage.

Perhaps we could call it an informed, willful attempt to patch a critically broken language.---On the other hand I have recently come across quite a few truly tragic turns of phrase like "For all intensive purposes.", that one is everywhere--just google for it.

My wife knows someone who says "I'd just assume not" and she's been trying to decide if she should correct him--I thought was a cute fluke, nobody would actually say that! Of course then I start noticing it in other places--last night I saw "I'd just assume not" in the documentation for a linux distro (freespire).

Then there was the training video at prior company where the guy kept saying "Per Se" (or the new written version "Per Say") in the same way most people insert "and" or "Uh" while speaking. "This variable is for regulating the speed per se, this other one is for timing..."

We are now in a world where most text that actually gets read is generated by people without language training of any sort (like myself).

Just give in, trying to correct this exponentially expanding pile of errors we call the internet is just "Tilling at Windmills" (Google it)

Years ago I tried to get Earthlink DSL service. I called and was told DSL was available at my house. My account is set up and the Earthlink person tells me they'd send me a package and then arrange for installation. Time passes and I don't receive the package. More time passes and I phone: I'm told that DSL is not available in my neighbourhood and so the package and my account was cancelled.

When I ask if perhaps Earthlink could have contacted me to tell me this a couple weeks earlier, the person on the phone tells me (without any hint of humour or irony) that I was sent an email. I never received an email. Yes, we sent an email. To which address I ask. They sent the email telling me that I could not have Earthlink service to the free Earthilink email address they had provided with my account. Super-Genius!

That may have been the stupidest customer service experience of my life and has forever tainted my opinion of anything having to do with Earhtlink.

Yeah, that's not the problem. I'm registered at hundreds if not thousands of sites with my earthlink address. All my friends know my earthlink address. I'm really dreading getting everything changed. My best idea so far is to send a mass email advising of the change, and pick through my 5,000 messages looking for anywhere I've registered and change it. Wait a month and see what still comes to my earthlink address, fixing those. Wait another month, hopefully volume has dropped off. Repeat until I go a month or two with no nonspam messages and feel comfortable saying goodbye forever to anything I forgot.

It's going to take many hours of boring eyestrain-inducing suffering.

I'm not happy with my bank anymore, and changing that is quite easy in comparison. Maybe I should do that first to build my confidence. I'll only have to change about 20 things that hook into my account and comb through say a year of statements to make that happen.

I stopped registering under my earthlink address a year or two ago, but I haven't taken on the backlog yet.